White House adviser Sebastian Gorka once compared Osama bin Laden, the slain leader of al Qaeda, to Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism. Gorka, who has expressed a dark view of Islam throughout his career, said in a 2012 lecture unearthed by The Daily Beast that “you could make the argument” bin Laden is Islam’s equivalent of Luther. “Martin Luther said what about Christianity? That it had lost its way, it had been corrupted, it had lost its roots. That was the essence of his thesis. What did Osama bin Laden, or his mentor, Abdullah Azzam, say? Exactly the same thing as Martin Luther, but for Islam: Islam has become corrupted and must be returned to its roots.” He continued, before moving on: “So there is an element to bin Laden himself being a reformer or a Martin Luther figure for Islam.”

—Spencer Ackerman